January 16, 2007

Everybody loves top 10 lists and Forbes does a great job of showcasing the best of just about everything relating to luxury. Since it’s the beginning of the year, Forbes put together a top 10 list of some of the most elegant cars coming to the market in 2007. This list includes the all new Audi R8 Coupe pictured above. Check out the list for yourself here.

December 25, 2006

PingMag introduced and conducted an interview with Japanese artist Kazuhiko Kawahara, otherwise known as Palla. With a background in architecture, Palla took interest in photography and naturally he was led to taking pictures of cityscape structures. In addition, he would make adjustments to the photos by duplicating layers and rotating or flipping it over the original image. The result is a pleasing array of lines and patterns of urban structures. From the interview, you can get a sense that Palla puts a lot of thought into each piece, as it requires meticulous judgment on his part of how much to shift the images. All of his works dating back to 2002 are available on his weblog Pallalink.net.

December 13, 2006

The guys at InquiringMind and the whole Goodfoot/Nomad group have really blown up lately and we definitely give them respect representing our hometown of Toronto and the rest of Canada.

For those who have checked out the InquiringMind website lately, you might notice a complete revamped layout and webpage. The online street culture magazine has decided with a clean, minimal look compared to their previous website. The new presentation allows users easy access to their articles, gallery and event information. Check out the new look at InquiringMind.

December 11, 2006

The Tap Project did such a great job designing the bottle. The bottle clearly caught my attention due to the great aesthetics attributed to it. It goes to show how influential designs can be to any product or cause.

The Tap Project is a very interesting project coming from UNICEF. On March 22, 2007, the United Nations’ World Water Day, hundreds of restaurants in New York City, will invite their patrons to pay $1 for something they normally get for free. Tap water. Although one would wonder why they would paid for tap water, the funds collected will support UNICEF water programs, which provide safe drinking water to children around the world.

There are over 21% of children living in developing countries (most of them in Africa) do not have access to clean water. That’s more than one billion people. 80% of all illness and infant mortality is due to waterborne disease. The lack of clean water is the second largest killer of children under the age of 5.

With just $1 UNICEF can provide 40 litres of safe drinking water, enough to give one child safe drinking water for 40 days or 40 children safe for one day.With just a dollar, UNICEF can provide 100 water purification tablets to provide clean water for children in crisis situations.

On March 22, 2007, there are several dozen Manhattan restaurants participating in this project so make sure you go out to eat and buy a couple of bottles of tap water via The Tap Project to support the cause. I know its pretty early to mention this cause but its better to be informed early rather than not to be informed at all. Spread the word and remember on March 22, 2007.

December 4, 2006

Relating to our name Speakeasy, here’s an interesting site honouring the repeal of prohibition created by Dewar’s, famous for their blended Scotch Whisky. On December 5th, 1933, the United States of America celebrated the ratification of the 21st Amendment to the U.S Constitution, repealing Prohibition. The site includes a PDF of the original New York Times article that appeared on December 5th, 1933, and a commercial of what life’s like without alcohol produced by Dewar’s. So check out the site if you’re genuinely interested in a history lesson or just want to be amused by an out of the ordinary marketing ploy. Oh, and if anyone from Dewar’s is reading this, please send some drinks our way so we can celebrate with you.

December 1, 2006

I don’t know if a lot of you are familiar with Second Life, but Second Life is a 3-D virtual world that is built and owned by its residents. You can maybe call it a more complex version of The Sims. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and is today inhabited by a total of 1,717,506 people worldwide. Players are able to invest real money for Linden dollars which allows participants to buy additional tools, land and objects within the virtual world. Conversely, players can also redeem their Linden dollars for U.S. dollars whenever they wish. The stuff you can create in this game is only limited to your imagination. Well, an article that caught my attention today wrote about how Anshe Chung, a real-estate tycoon in the online game Second Life, has enough assets in Linden dollars that allows her to fully convert her holdings in the game for $1 million in real US currency. Read the rest of this entry »

November 13, 2006

Kix-files, one of my favourite sites for first hand information on shoes and clothing, released their first issue of their online magazine. The first issue is only in Chinese, but the subsequent issues will be in both English and Chinese. The content in the magazine is broader than their daily reportings on mostly street fashion and sneakers. Check out their first issue here.

November 12, 2006

Jellyfish.com is known as the Internet’s first buying engine. Like any shopping search engine, Jellyfish helps you find the product you are looking for at the lowest cost. What’s different is that you’ll receive automatic savings on everything you buy through the site. Jellyfish promises to share at least half of every $1 they earn when you shop. Online stores compete for your attention through Jellyfish, by paying Jellyfish to get on top of the rankings, rather than advertising. So pretty much, the more they pay, the more money you receive as cashback when you purchase your product.

Another cool feature on their site is Smack Shopping where a limited number of items are put up for the Deal of the Day for a limited amount of time. As the time goes down, the cashback savings offered by Jellyfish goes up until the cashback equals the purchase price of the item. So essentially, the longer the item is up, the cheaper it is when you purchase it.

November 9, 2006

This high end street boutique store carries renowned brands such as A.P.C, Band of Outsiders, Bless, Bernhard Willhelm and Common Projects. The specific selection of clothing (mens and womens), accessories and books sold makes South Willard one of the ideal places to shop if you’re looking for niche brands you normally wouldn’t find anywhere else. Definitely worth checking out if you’re in the Los Angeles area.

Complete list of brands carried at South Willard (according to their website):

November 9, 2006

Check out the new Adobe site, The Creative Mind, which showcases the capabilities of their new Adobe Creative Suite 2.3. The interactive flash site is really well done with cartoonish graphics and jovial tunes in the background. Take a look here.

October 31, 2006

Microzine is a London based lifestyle store especially for men, offering the ‘latest, greatest, next, best, classic, fastest, limited edition and exclusive of everything for the modern man’. Their overall philosophy is simply to stock the store with cool things that you would want to buy. Now, they have introduced their own magazine Magalogue with interviews, reviews, various articles and also showcases stuff from their stores. Read their online mag here.

October 26, 2006

October 25, 2006

Taiwan superstar Jay Chou is celebrating the one year anniversary of his store OMNI. For this occasion, OMNI teams up with the famous Taiwanese sneaker website KENLU.NET to create two exclusive t-shirts as well as a pair of Nike Dunk Lows designed by Jay Chou. More pictures on the Dunks are soon to come at Samplekickz. These will go on sale starting in the middle of November. Info and pics from Mr..SK via Kix-files.

-phil

Samplekickz has posted several new pics and info about the Dunks and the tees.

October 23, 2006

GQ recently released their list of the most stylish films of all time and they’re right on with the films listed. Actually nearly most of my favorite films are on this list. Without any doubt, Ocean’s 11 (the original Rat Pack version of course) made it on the list. If you ever watched the original 1960 version of Ocean’s 11 you know what I’m talking about. It is THE definition of cool. Old blue eyes aka Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and the rest of the Rat Pack. It’s a heist film. In Vegas. Come on. Sure it wasn’t the greatest film I’ve ever seen but it has timeless style.

I’m glad GQ didn’t limit the list to American films only. Godard’s feature “Breathless” which started the genre of French New Wave Cinema (Click here for my review of “Breathless”) as well as Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 (which is probably one of my favorite films of all time), made the list. I absolutely loved Wong Kar Wai’s “In The Mood For Love” and it definitely had a reason to be on this list because its stylish cinematography/photography that made this film. Trainspotting, A Clockwork Orange, Rushmore and of course my favorite film of all time, The Godfather Part II were notables of the list as well.

October 20, 2006

The Newport, California based clothing company has an unique way of promoting their clothing line. Known for their preppy meets surfer look, the people from Trovata come up with fictional stories to market their seasonal collections. From their website, customers can read the narrative as they acquire about their apparel. Their latest novella for the Fall 2006 collection called ‘A Mountain Spelled M-U-R-D-E-R’ is definitely an amusing read. The clothes aren’t bad either.